The Times A Year in Nature Notes. Derwent May

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СКАЧАТЬ ladybirds will soon appear; there are also ten-spot, eleven-spot, and yellow-and-black fourteen-spot ladybirds. They will have many broods, and they and their larvae will feed on aphids all the summer long.

      Some red dead-nettles survived the winter; now a new crop of them is springing up everywhere. They have rich purple to pink flowers, which nestle at the top of the stem in a little rosette of purple leaves, so that the whole crown is coloured. Countless thousands of them can spread across a field of old stubble that has not been ploughed in.

      The bold yellow blossoms of the dandelion are starting to line the roadsides, wherever there is an open patch. On hazel bushes, some of the male catkins have already shed their pollen and are turning brown.

      

23rd March

      NEST-BUILDING IS UNDER way. Female song thrushes are constructing deep nests of twigs and grass in hedges and evergreen shrubs, and will line them with a thick, hard layer of bare mud. (Blackbirds’ nests can be distinguished from song thrushes’ nests by the further lining of dry grass that the blackbirds add.) The female song thrush will lay about four or five sky-blue eggs with a few black spots on them, and will do most of the incubating. The male will sing in a treetop for most of the day while she is sitting there, but he will come down and help to feed the young.

      Hedge sparrows are starting to nest in similar places, and they too will have bright blue eggs, but smaller and unspotted. The female will sit on the eggs, but she has complicated relationships. As well as her chief mate, she may have subsidiary males to help her feed the chicks. Pairs of long-tailed tits can be seen close to each other on a bough, both of them tearing off green-grey lichen with which to camouflage their domed nest. Some robins have also started to build, while others are prospecting holes in walls, hedge banks and even fallen flowerpots and old kettles.

      

24th March

      THE SHARP-POINTED HORNBEAM buds are a streaky pink and green as they start to swell and open. If the warm weather continues, the leaves will soon be out. The natural hornbeam trees are broad-spreading and rather drooping. There is also a common cultivated variety, called fastigiata, with tightly bunched, upward-pointing branches that give the young trees the shape of a flame.

      White dead-nettle flowers are opening along the lanes. There were some plants still in flower in early January, but these flowers come from the new spring buds. The leaves look like nettle leaves, but do not sting. However, young, pale green stinging nettle leaves are also coming up, and these can sting just as painfully as the older leaves.

      Lesser celandines are now flowering in profusion, with beds of gleaming yellow flowers sometimes stretching for yards alongside ditches. There are also thick beds of cuckoo pint leaves, some with purple spots.

      

25th March

      THE HAWTHORN HEDGES are getting greener every day. On many of them small flower buds are also appearing now. They are like tiny, white-tipped drumsticks, and generally grow in groups of three. On some more advanced patches of hedge, in sunny spots, a few of the white flowers have even opened. The other name for hawthorn is may, since that is the month in which the flowers traditionally open. In fact, they are often out in abundance in April – and in a warm, early spring they are not May flowers but March flowers. Under the hedges, the March flora are mostly yellow, with lesser celandines, dandelions, coltsfoot and primroses flourishing everywhere.

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